Archive for January, 2019

When you are in the minority, and you can’t legislate, you concentrate on messaging. And progressives are in the minority in the House Democratic Caucus. They shouldn’t be looking for a seat at the table alongside the leadership; they should be focused on supporting the candidacies of movement-oriented progressives everywhere they can, so that they can increase the leverage they have when sitting across the table from the leadership, until one day they have the votes in the Democratic Caucus to win the leadership themselves. They should be paying their dues to Progressive Caucus PAC, Justice Democrats PAC, PCCC PAC, not the damn DCCC, where their money will be given disproportionately to candidates who will vote against them in the Democratic Caucus. And, in the meantime, within the House, as long as they don’t have the numbers to force the issue(s), “shaping the landscape of what we think is possible,” as AOC puts it here, is EXACTLY what they should be doing.

It has been all but impossible to read anything written about Lauren Underwood since she won election to Congress from IL-14 in November that doesn’t point out that she is the first woman, and first minority, to represent her district.

Which is true. She is.

But it is also not entirely true.

It all depends on how you read, or write, one of those “firsts.”

For example, I used to live in IL-14. I lived on Aurora’s east side for a year or so, I lived on Aurora’s west side for another four years, and then Boulder Hill after that. And if I was still living in IL-14 it would not be true that Lauren Underwood was the first woman representing me in Congress. That’s because I had a woman representing me in Congress the entire time I lived in Aurora. Her name was Charlotte Reid.